


what had just blossomed inside me

by wtfoctagon



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 09:56:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16992816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfoctagon/pseuds/wtfoctagon
Summary: vignettes of Talanah and Aloy falling in love, mostly small sketches in vaguely chronological order





	1. sunrise over the mesa

**Author's Note:**

> lmao this is mostly scrapped scenes from my attempts at writing a coherent long fic for this pairing, i was really liking what i wrote but couldn’t string it together so now i’m just throwing it out there so it won’t just hide in my docs forever

The sunrise over the mesa is all the prettier for the demigod lying amongst her silk cushions on the veranda, chest rising and falling slowly as the light starts to blanket the world in a red tinge.

  
Talanah knows Aloy doesn’t like being called that—hence, why she would never say it to Aloy’s face—but there is something to be said about the way that the sunlight meets Aloy’s hair, igniting it in fiery splendor even as the rest of her body lies serene. Her skin is soft and pale like the surface of a lake: it’s strangely and starkly representative of how she is, really. All the fierce passions and calm softness of nature, in one mortal body.

  
It almost looks like a scene from a tapestry. The gold and amber mesas stretching into the horizon, the rivers and foliage swathed in orange, the wood soaked in a ruddy clay hue, the silks burning a bright vermillion and Aloy, herself, the flame-haired hero, slumbering peacefully in the middle of it all.

  
(Yes, Talanah knows Aloy doesn’t like being called a demigod. But she doesn’t exactly make it easy to think of her as anything else, does she? Not with all her metal demon-slaying and winning impossible wars, all her ferocity in battle that’s unhampered by the compassion she holds for the world.)

  
Talanah takes another sip of her milk and honey-ed cha, feeling it wring the morning chill from her bones. For a brief moment, she wonders if this is what Khane wives are supposed to feel like, if this is the calm that her mother hoped she would feel one day: sitting on a chair just by the open veranda doors, in her silken nightclothes and with a cup of cha, watching the sunlight envelop a warrior sleeping amongst bits of armor and weaponry that was shucked off in exhaustion just the night before.

  
Except, Talanah thinks, her mother would still be disappointed anyhow. Because even if the cold mesa air brushes past her long hair like any other Carja woman’s that morning, it is not her warrior who’s sleeping away on her cushions and this stillness is only so sweet for its brevity. In a few moments, she will drain the last of her cha, do her face paint, don her armor, and head out for the Hunter’s Lodge for the day, as any other Khane man who’s had the honor of becoming Sunhawk.

Maybe it’s a little bittersweet. It’s not as if she has the comforts of a Carja man to compensate for all the things she supposedly missing out on—she doesn’t have a wife to help do her hair and clasp her armor on for her. No, she’s alone, not even any servants here in her family estate to help her get ready. She brews her own cha every morning, she does her own face paint every morning, and she ties on her own armor strings every morning. Stuck between the roles of man and woman, noble and commoner. All alone.

  
Aloy stirs a bit, shifting in the silks as she throws an arm over her eyes. Talanah smiles slightly as she takes another sip.

  
Well, maybe not completely alone. Not today.


	2. may the sun light their passing

Her family would have loved Aloy, Talanah thinks. Her father, in particular, would have been grateful for how and when Aloy showed up in her life— always a devout man, he would have called her a gift from the Sun sent on the day Tarkas died and left Talanah all alone. A lesson to show Talanah that her ability to trust in others is not a weakness, a reward for her faith in the bonds between hunters. He would have thanked the destiny that brought two headstrong huntresses from different tribes together in a world full of fools determined to undermine them at every turn. 

Her brother, a more practical man, would have had something more useful to say: destiny or coincidence, the fact of the matter is that Aloy was exactly what Talanah needed, at exactly the right time, and he would have been happy enough just for that. Always more of a tinkerer than a hunter at heart, he would have loved Aloy’s ingeniousness, her modifications to her equipment, her ability to tame machines. He always had a curious mind, always eager to seek the truth behind the machinations of the world, the facts behind mindless scripture, just like her— they would have gotten along frighteningly well. 

And her mother? She might have been scandalized, at first, at a  _ woman  _ wielding bow and spear and enabling Talanah to follow suit in such endeavors. But for all her harsh words and sharp scowls at the thought of Talanah becoming  _ anything  _ than a proper Khane woman, Talanah knows that she had only sought to herd her along the known and accepted path of a woman because she didn’t want her daughter to be shunned and alone. Because she knew that the self-made road is the loneliest one and she wanted to shield Talanah from that— 

Talanah likes to believe that eventually, her mother would have been grateful for Aloy as well. For being a kindred soul, one who forges her own path and destiny no matter how lonely it might be, for being there to stand on her own alongside Talanah. 

But, if she were alive to meet Aloy, then they wouldn’t have met at all, would they? If her mother had outlived her illness, if her father and brother had survived the Massacre, then Talanah wouldn’t have been alone in the Hunter’s Lodge that day, about the cross paths with the Nora huntress— she might have been home, practicing her calligraphy or even— Sun forbid— married with a child on the way, and her family would have had nothing to be grateful to Aloy for. There’s no point in thinking of what they would have said: the possibility undermines itself. 

That’s just how life is, Talanah supposes. The past remains as bleak and unchangeable as ever, and wishful fantasies are still useless against grief.


End file.
